It is entirely allowed to our, critic that the doctrine of sanctification is vital. If wrong there, people are wrong fundamentally, if not fatally. We do not shrink from the closest scrutiny, having only scripture to form our faith, without the bias of human formularies to the judgment. Here again it is conceded that Brethren's general doctrine as to the source and agent of sanctification “is that of the Church in all ages.” (Pages 90, 91.) “But when we proceed to inquire into their views as to the nature and working of this gift, their peculiarities begin to show themselves.” Whose view is really defective and unsound will soon appear.
Thus Mr. T. wholly misunderstands the question in thinking that, according to Brethren, sanctification in any Christian application means “the mere setting apart and consecrating to God's service” (p. 92); as in sanctifying the sabbath (Gen. 2), the firstborn of Israel (Ex. 13), or the temple of Solomon (1 Chron. 7:1616And Maachah the wife of Machir bare a son, and she called his name Peresh; and the name of his brother was Sheresh; and his sons were Ulam and Rakem. (1 Chronicles 7:16)). No book, tract, teaching, or brother, of the least consideration, ever so reduced “sanctification” as bearing on the separation of a sinner to God. Methinks such a sense could be found by every Anglican (though not there only) much nearer home; but the notion is absolutely unknown among Brethren. Indeed, Mr. T. himself is radically in error; for in this connection he can see only “a prolonged process by which evil dispositions are cured, evil habits are broken off, and the man more and more renewed in the spirit of his mind after the image of Him that created him.”
Now any intelligent reader of our writings ought to know without a shadow of doubt that we hold, as unequivocally and fully at least as himself, the practical sense of sanctification, as in 1 Thess. 4 and v., and Heb. 12:1414Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord: (Hebrews 12:14). Accordingly Mr. T. is compelled to own that Brethren admit the importance of sanctification in the practical and of course progressive sense, as taught in these texts; but he alleges that they “direct attention mainly to the former meaning [i.e., the absolute setting apart of the person to God], which they declare to be that most frequently employed in scripture” (p. 94); and three writers are cited in confirmation of it.
Now the fact is that Mr. T. overlooks the nature of the sanctification in principle, or absolute setting apart, of the believer to God, which all Brethren hold as that first sense, contradistinguished from practical holiness in the second place. Far from those that regard it as a form or even “an empty form,” they believe “sanctification of the Spirit,” to take the phrase in 1 Peter 1:22Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied. (1 Peter 1:2), to be inseparable from the quickening grace of Christ, by which the soul has new and everlasting life imparted which it never possessed before. Is not this if true its most momentous sense? For, unless this be realized as a groundwork, practical holiness has no place and is an impossibility; whereas if the person is thus set apart to God by the life-giving operation of the Spirit, begotten by the word of truth, practical holiness becomes an immediate and felt responsibility of every day, as scripture declares and experience shows abundantly. Yet it is in this primary sense that the word is for the most part, if not altogether, unknown in the language of theology. Hence Brethren are the more bound to urge it, in zeal for God's truth all but universally ignored, and therefore in love and bounden duty for the best interests of God's church.
When Old Testament usage is referred to, it is merely for the general idea of setting apart to God. But no brother conceives that in the New Testament it is an outward form, as so often in the Old. On the contrary, “sanctification of the Spirit” is by the apostle of the circumcision contrasted with the separative ordinance of a fleshly kind familiar to every Jew. Ours is inward and real, as being of the Holy Spirit; who thereby constitutes the person thus severed from the world a saint, not in name or profession only but in deed and truth having been begotten again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, through the word of God which liveth and abideth.
Now this is the fuller meaning generally attached to the term sanctification in the New Testament, which is put by Mr. T. and his Anglican friends, and Roman Catholics, and Protestants in general, “quite in the background,” to say the least; whereas Brethren only, as far as I am aware, are witnesses of this great truth, having recovered it from the rubbish of ages into its just and commanding place as set out in Scripture. So unaccustomed is our censor to the truth and depth of sanctification in its primary New Testament sense that he never realizes his own misconception of the matter in dispute. But he is inexcusable in supposing that, if any sober mind contended for a mere consecration as generally used in the Old Testament, the same person could say that such a consecration involves and secures everlasting salvation. This is the inconsistency of the reasoning in pp. 95, 96, not in the least degree of those he criticizes. Brethren affirm that the New Testament speaks of a primary sanctification which is complete, as in 1 Cor. 6:1111And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God. (1 Corinthians 6:11), where it is no more a progressive thing than the washing or the justification mentioned before and after. Will he or any Pelagian even argue that this means our old nature getting better? Is he not compelled to own that the apostle here beyond cavil treats the Corinthian believers, not as gradually advancing in holiness, but as already sanctified in fact? Others like Dean Alford may lower it down to mere Old Testament consecration, in direct antagonism to Brethren's teaching that it is a real and everlasting separation to God.
We all heartily agree that every Christian is called to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and that this is sanctification in the secondary sense of practical separation from evil to a fuller enjoyment of God. But we agree with Mr. T. that “the difference between their teaching and that of the rest of Christendom” in the primary sense lies far deeper than phraseology; and as he does not face the scriptures we cite, let some one else essay the task. 1 Peter 1:22Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied. (1 Peter 1:2) demands full consideration on this head. The ordinary view, which maintains for the New Testament only or chiefly sanctification in the sense of progressive holiness, makes this scripture unintelligible or worse. For with such a view practical holiness would precede the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ or justification, which might suit a Romanist perhaps, but is flat contrary to all Reformed doctrine. Again, practical holiness would precede obedience, and thus expose souls either to fall into the substitutional notion of Christ's obedience, which is assuredly not taught here, or to mere nonsense, for obedience is a large part of practical holiness instead of being its result or aim.
And Mr. T. ought to have learned, from one of the papers he cites, the hopeless difficulties into which the prevalent ignoring of sanctification in its primary New Testament sense brings even able and pious men. Take for instance Beza's version “ad sanctificationem spiritus, per obedientiam et aspersionem sanguinis I. C.” To what was such a perversion due? Certainly not to lack of scholarship, for none of the early Protestants was a better Greek and Latin scholar than the successor to Calvin. It was owing solely to the same mischievous tradition which blots out the fundamental and primary New Testament sense of sanctification, seeing scarce anything more than the secondary progressive sense which nobody combats. It is worse even than the unmeaning Vulgate version, which makes ἐν and εἰς equivalent; for Beza renders ἐν ad and εἰς per! If he had known the truth to which Brethren have recalled attention, the difficulty would have vanished.
Peter tells the believing remnant of the dispersion in Asia Minor that they were elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father in (or by) sanctification of the Spirit unto obedience and the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. They would at once feel the allusion to Ex. 24, where the mediator Moses sprinkles with blood the book and the people, pledged to obey the law under the sanction of the death attested in that blood. Now it was a personal election, not a national one according to the call of Jehovah, but of God revealing Himself by the blessed name of Father, in the separative power of the Holy Spirit, that it might be living reality and not an external and fleshly form; to obey as the Lord Jesus obeyed and to be sprinkled with His blood which speaks of peace made through His cross, instead of that which threatened death as the penalty of disobedience.
As Mr. T. evades the truth, though plainly set before his eyes, so he is wrong on all the doctrinal issues he specifies as involved in the primary sense of the word.
I. Rom. 6 vii., and Gal. 2; 5, with other scriptures, exclude the law as a rule of life from sanctification in every sense. “We who died to sin, how shall we any longer live therein?” “Sin shall not have dominion over you, for ye are not under law but under grace.” “Wherefore, my brethren, ye also were made dead to the law through the body of Christ, that ye should be to another who was raised from the dead, that we might bring forth fruit unto God.” Thus through Christ's efficacious death are we delivered, not merely by His life communicated to us, nor by His death for our sins only, but also by our death with Him who is risen, and we in Him. It is not that the law is dead, as the Authorized Version says (Rom. 6:66Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. (Romans 6:6)), following the unfounded and dangerous misreading of the Received Text; but we, if we had been Jews even, are, as believers, discharged from the law, having died to that wherein we were held. The law lives to condemn the guilty, and the awakened soul submits to its killing power. “For I through the law am dead to the law (the clean opposite of a rule of life), that I might live unto God. I am crucified with Christ, yet I live; no longer I, but Christ liveth in me; and that life] which I now live in the flesh I live in faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” This is the true rule of life for the Christian. The power of sin, on the contrary, is the law, says the apostle in 1 Cor. 15:5656The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. (1 Corinthians 15:56): not because the commandment is not holy and righteous and good, but because the material on which it acts—the flesh—is only evil continually. Life is not in the law, but in the Son of God; and what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and [as an offering] for sin, condemned sin in the flesh; that the righteous import of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit. Those under the law, or that desire to be, break it by biting and devouring one another. Those who walk [in or by] the Spirit do not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. “But if ye are led by the Spirit, ye are not under the law.” Can words more definitely negative the notion that it is our rule of life? This is Christ held up in the word brought home by the Holy Ghost. Against the fruit of the Spirit there is no law; but grace alone produces it. And bear in mind that the point discussed in this place is not justification, but practical holiness and the power that forms it.
It is wholly false that the truth of our primary sanctification hinders, for it immensely promotes, the pressure of growth on our souls. The converse is true, and the real danger of Christendom's ignorance is that millions are full of words, thoughts, feelings, efforts after practical holiness, who have never been sanctified personally, but are still dead in trespasses in sins. We must have life in Christ, and stand in our true relationship to God, before the question of a holy walk or growth in grace begins.
The truth of our primary sanctification by the Spirit in not the least degree renders void the solemn warnings of scripture (1 & 2 Corinthians Heb. 5). Indeed these warnings pre-suppose the Christian's privilege, and we are admonished to “hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end"; “to hold fast the confidence and rejoicing of the hope firm to the end.” “Cast not away therefore your confidence which hath great recompense of reward.” “We are not of them that draw back unto perdition.” Doubtless these exhortations or warnings act only on the faithful. Formalists may shudder for a moment, but pay no obedient heed; and, not being sanctified by the Spirit, their endeavors after practical holiness are only a fair show in the flesh. Godly Anglicans know this but too well.
IV. The last objection is simply a denial of what every intelligent Christian holds: the coexistence of the two natures, the old man and the new, in the believer. It agrees indeed with the low views set forth on original sin by the Council of Trent and Popish theology in general. But the Articles ix., xv., xvi., should have taught better; not to speak of the perfect apostolic doctrine, the best of all. Ignorance of life in Christ, as well as of redemption, lies at the bottom of this, in which all Arminians would join. May we say, if it be needed by any one that has read our writings, that we seriously object to the error expressed in the Authorized Version of Gal. 5:1717For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would. (Galatians 5:17), last clause? It is untrue and unholy. We are responsible never to sin, and the Spirit is in us to give adequate power to prevent it. Verse 16 contradicts the rendering of 17: the Revised Version is right. The Authorized Version here naturally means an excuse for sinning, one of the consequences of non-deliverance from law, the other on the opposite side being the presumptuous thought of perfection attainable here below, into one or other of which all are apt to fall who know not the gospel by faith. From Tyndale the English versions were bad. The more do I regret that Mr. Green and the Bishop of Durham differ from Bishop Ellicott and Dean-Alford in saying that &a here seems to denote simply, the result. Any sense here but purpose is as opposed to the context as to truth and holiness.